mgo.licio.us

"The face of the operation is Briatore (referred to exclusively in the film by his colleagues and angry, chanting detractors as "Flavio"), an anthropomorphic radish who spends most of his time at QPR plotting to fire all of the managers."

At press time, Harbaugh had sent Michigan’s athletic department an envelope containing a heavily annotated seating chart, a list of the 63,000 seat views he had found unsatisfactory, and a glowing 70-page report on section 25, row 12, seat 9, which he claimed is “exactly what the great sport of football is all about.”

Bubble Rooting Interest - Reversed?

Up until today, I have been rooting for bubble teams to lose so that in the event that Michigan lost to Illinois we would still be dancing. However, with this latest win, I am 100% confident that Michigan is dancing (as is most of America it seems).

Question for the board: Do we now root for bubble teams to win in the hopes it knocks Sparty out? I try to keep a non-MSU attitude in that I do not root against Sparty when it hurts Michigan, and until today I wanted MSU to remain on the right side of things to help Michigan's case for getting in if they were to lose today. Do we still need Sparty to be in the NCAA tourny to keep UM a locked in bid? Do bubble teams winning and knocking MSU out possibly cause Michigan to drop into the play-in game? I'd like to root against Sparty but not at the detriment of Michigan's bid or NCAA bye (non-play-in game) chances.

I'd actually prefer a 12 seed to an 8/9. If we get a 12 I really like our chances of beating a 5 and a 4 seed to reach the Sweet 16 compared to our chances of beating an 8/9 and a 1 seed. I think this team has the potential to be very dangerous in the Tourny where people are unfamiliar with our team, and I'd rather not play Kansas again despite such a good game earlier in the year simply because I want to abuse teams that aren't prepared to deal with UM.

I'd like a 11 seed instead of a 10 seed, given there are probably no real differences between a 6 and a 7 seed. Then we don't have to play that #2 seed in the 2nd round. A 10 seed is better than the 9 seed for the reasons you described above.

11 or 12 seed is preferable to 9 or 10. I don't think there's any way we are a 12 seed now though. We are a 10 or 11 with a loss tomorrow.

The question is how high can we get with a BTT tourney win? There was the case a couple years ago when Syracuse went from a bubble big east team playing on the first day of the conf tourney to a 5 seed after four straight wins to take the conf title.

If we beat OSU and Wisky/Purdue to take the tourney, I can see a similar bump for us. If we do that, it would be an amazing 11 wins in our last 14 games. Wins against two top 10 teams on a neutral court and the only three losses coming the way they came? You can't name ten teams that would have played the second half of the season better than that. We'll be a 5-7 seed if we win the BTT.

Probably haven't adjusted yet to the reality that we actually just won but it's still probably best to cheer for bubble teams to lose. There are 3-4 conferences that could have bid stealers and it would be best for the chaos under us to continue and let us get as high a seed as possible.

If Sparty gets in, they get in. Not going to cheer against them. They know we were the better team this season.

I've had it reversed for a while now. I really think U-M was in whether or not we beat Illinois, so I've been pulling for bubble teams like Marquette because I've got twice the rival action on the bubble and both would be oh-so-fun to watch in the NIT.

Obviously I'm no expert but I think the general thought is that a BTT win gets us in the 8/9 game somewhere, and losing to OSU puts us around 10/11. So I guess beating OSU and losing in the championship game gets us around 9/10 seed.

But I think an OSU win might be enough to bump us up to an 8/9 game. The big number-one-with-a-bullet knock on MIchigan is the lack of a "signature win." Knocking off a near-certain #1 seed in a tournament setting would be huge.